Youth Match Racing World Championship - Day 3
by Lucile Troel 21 Jul 2022 18:14 PDT
17-23 July 2022
20 matches were contested today in 5 flights, completing the round robin, the overall ranking for which determines the quarter finalists for the Youth Match Racing World Championship.
It proved to be a long morning in Pornichet. Having led all the crews out onto the water at around 07:30 UTC, the Race Committee decided to get everyone back ashore one hour later due to the lack of breeze. However, at 10:00 UTC, a thermal breeze finally began dishing out ten knots or so of W'ly wind, enabling the Race Committee to complete the round robin.
In the overall ranking, it's Ian Garreta's French crew which reigns supreme ahead of Emil Kjaer's Danish crew. Indeed, boasting an equal number of wins in the round robin, the only way to separate them is to take into account the match which saw the two teams pitted against one another. In order, the other crews who have qualified for the final phase are American Jeffrey Petersen, Frenchman Thimoté Polet, Australian Finn Tapper, Italian Riccardo Sepe, Frenchman Timothée Rossi and Swede Marius Westerlind.
In the second half of the day, the 8 crews who qualified for the quarter finals selected their rival of choice and began battling it out. 2 of a possible 5 matches have been contested so far. This evening, Marius Westerlind is leading 2 to 0 against Ian Garreta, Thimoté Polet has 2 to 0 against Finn Tapper, Timothée Rossi is also leading 2 to 0 against Emil Kjaer, and finally Jeffrey Petersen and Riccardo Sepe left play today on a score of 1 apiece. There is still precious little separating the crews tonight though, since there are still a potential 3 matches to be played out in the final phase!
Impressions
Alexander Colquitt (GBR)
"We've had a fantastic time. It was the first international match racing event for myself and all the crew. There wasn't as much breeze as we'd have liked, but we had some really close matches against the crews who are top of the ranking and we've learnt a lot. It's been great!"
Jeffrey Petersen (USA)
"It's a good day for us; the first one where we've sailed the whole day. It's really cool to have 5 races in a row. We won 4 and lost one due to a slight error against the Danes, but we felt really good on the boat. We're happy to have made it through to the quarter finals. All the teams are really good, more so than we'd expected. It's great to see all these teams racing at the top level! For the quarter finals we've chosen the Italian Sepe. We're on 1 apiece this evening so they've given us what we paid for! We're tied on points so it's all to play for tomorrow!"
Finn Tapper (AUS)
"We had a great day. We won 3 matches and lost 1 at the end of the round robin, but we got into the quarter finals, which was our main aim! After that, we raced 2 of our quarter final matches. Unfortunately, we lost both of them, but all in all it's been a good day and we'll continue to give our all tomorrow!"
Full results available here.